| SAA-UT conference on Archives and Human Rights, Spring 2016: David had news about an exciting conference for next spring to be put on by himself and other SAA-UT officers. There are many in the Austin area who are interested in archives, human rights, community archives, social justice etc. because there’s a lot of that going on in Austin. - Group has only met “once and a half.”
- David said they are not necessarily looking for help but would appreciate insight about organizing, finding panel speakers, promotion, etc.
- Late Feb/early March next year.
- They also want to talk about diversity (or lack thereof) in the profession – so if it’s something people know about or are interested in, they definitely open to suggestions of who to talk to.
- Guests will mostly be from Austin area but they might be able to get funding to invite a keynote speaker from elsewhere.
- Jennifer suggested Burgis Jules at UC Riverside.
- Copwatch is a local group they were interested in.
- Conference will probably be a day and a half.
- Jennifer suggested they connect with the archives and human rights working group.
| David Bliss | |
5 min | Update on calendar for group: - In last meeting, we discussed topics to guide each one of our meetings. SAA came up – maybe folks could get together and debrief. Beth volunteered to populate calendar with conferences. The meeting that follows a conference could be a debriefing meeting. She will put SAA, SSA, Texas Conference on Digital Libraries and Digital Humanities. At the moment, she has only put future dates for SAA at the moment.
- Discussion about calendar of meetings and rooms – this room has been reserved through August 12th.
- If there’s an open slot for a meeting because it’s a 5th week, then we could have a brown bag lunch type of meeting.
| Beth Dodd | |
30 min | Documentation repository work session: - Stephanie talked Documentation Working Group, which is a group for documentation regarding digital asset management. So it’s similar to the documentation group going on here.
- Beth would like to have documentation regarding an exhibition loan policy. She looked at other campuses’ policies. She finds that it would be useful to have a date on documents, to know when it’s finished versus when it’s in development, which would give more context to document.
- Group decided that having a spreadsheet to share documentation (with links) would be more useful than having it in the Wiki.
- Beth pointed out that some documentation may not be linkable because it may not be in any kind electronic form anywhere.
- Jennifer – there’s a section of the Wiki called Resources where we can put a link to the spreadsheet, and make it public and editable. Is there anything we wouldn’t want to be public?
- Draft policies – those we could just share amongst ourselves.
SPREADSHEETS - Clarification on what the documentation is for. Examples:
- Documentation about collection management work
- Collection development
- Digitzation tracking – writing down what everybody is using, what systems they’re using (Filemaker, spreadsheets, etc.).
- List of policies – deeds of gift, reproduction policies, reading room policies.
- Any kind of documentation we’re creating that we think is shareable that others could use.
- Stephanie said what they’re putting together is what they’ll present in DocWorks – what they would like for documentation for digital asset management system. Digital assets they have are usually student reports of what they do for the semester.
- Stephanie – one of the issues at AAA is a very limited staff. Nobody has time to update policies – in the analog policies, there’s lots of pencil marks and notes. Accessions manual is from 1998 for example, so it doesn’t have a digital form that could be shared.
- When we have documentation that is out of date, we can add a note in the spreadsheet that it might not reflect current practice.
- Beth said that they are required to assign monetary value to items they obtain. There are some things in manual are about how to come up with the dollar amount but it would be helpful for this group to get together to be consistent about monetary appraisal in any UT Austin repository.
- Common requirements is another good thing to have documentation on.
- Marianna – it would be helpful for RIM to have documentation about what university materials are desired by archives
- David said that the documentation that he uses is just for his use – another GRA who comes in can create their own documentation. Higher-level documentation for the Benson would be from Teresa that he might not have access to.
Brainstorming about what columns we need. - Function – this is for things like appraisal, development, digital exhibits, method of delivery/access,
Beth asked if the spreadsheet could have a reference to the DAMS Documentation Working group? | all | |
-- | Next Meeting: Next meeting will be pre-gaming SAA – so bring your schedule or other materials about the conference. Going forward, perhaps we can offer a chance for people who are speaking to give their presentation beforehand as a run through. Or we can also have them give the talk afterwards if they want, for anyone who may have missed the main event. | | |